Video intifada

Jamila Jabbar holding a knife seconds before she is shot near the Israeli settlement of Ariel in occupied territories

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If I were in charge of the Palestinian hasbara budget I would spend it all on video cameras. The recent outbreak of the video intifada has done more to show the relationship between the occupier and the occupied than anything before.

Each of these videos tells the same story, with no ambiguity, that no hasbara can contend with, that no obfuscation can camouflage. These videos are the best answer to Benjamin Netanyahu and Jeffrey Goldberg. They show evil and cruelty by Israeli Defense Forces soldiers towards Palestinians.

While the world is clearly deaf it might turn out to be more difficult for the world to be blind, to this video of Mustafa Adel Al-Khatib, 17, being shot in the back and killed in the Old City last year.

Or this video of a Palestinian girl being shot at a bus shelter inside the occupation as she holds up a knife in obvious desperation.

Or this video of Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, 21, being murdered on the ground by an Israeli medic, Elor Azaria, in occupied Hebron last March.

Or this video obtained by the human rights group B’Tselem a year ago of Muhammad al-Kasba, 17, throwing a rock that broke the windshield of a jeep a brigade commander was riding in. So the commander jumped out of the vehicle and pursued al-Kasba, shooting him 3 times in his upper body and killing him. The beginning of the execution was captured on the video:

The killing of Mohammed near the Qalandia checkpoint last Friday received widespread coverage in the Israeli media, both because of the seniority of the officer involved – a brigade commander, Col Yisrael Shomer, and because of the support he received immediately after the shooting from senior members of Israel’s government, including education minister Naftali Bennett.

The killing was given extra prominence because two of Mohammed’s brothers – aged 15 and 11 – were also killed by the Israeli military during the second intifada, while a third brother survived being shot.

B’Tselem’s investigation said:

Sweeping support for Binyamin Brigade Commander [Colonel Yisrael] Shomer’s action conveys this message to troops: shooting a Palestinian stone thrower is acceptable, even desirable, even if the person is fleeing and no longer a threat.

The case against Colonel Shomer was dismissed, though (as William Booth of the Washington Post reported).

Why should Colonel Shomer get off and medic Azaria get charged with a crime for the Hebron killing? It’s a very good question. The Azaria defense is going to share the sentiment expressed by Gideon Levy here.

“The fleeing teenager didn’t endanger [Shomer’s] life. The shooting was an act of punishment and revenge… [But] After nine months of investigation, which could have ended in nine days, the Military Advocate General described his conduct as an “operational mistake” and closed the file.”
“ …After the incredible decision of the Military Advocate General Brig. Gen. Sharon Afek to close the case of Col. Yisrael Shomer, there’s no longer any point to continue the farce of investigating the Hebron executioner. “

The consensus in Israel is that the only crime Elor Azaria committed was getting caught, getting filmed. And Azaria’s defense in why pick on Elor Azaria? Everyone kills Palestinians. All this IDF dirty laundry, coming from this one video!

For the outside world, these videos show that Benjamin Netanyahu’s campaign of dehumanizing the Palestinians has been a rousing success. They show what happens when you brainwash an already vulnerable Jewish Israeli society with the belief that Israel’s enemies, the Palestinians, are uniquely evil, and that “our children”, as Netanyahu has described the Jewish Israeli soldiers, are the opposite of that.

After seeing these videos it should be obvious to those honest enough to consider: it’s not only the occupation itself which breeds Palestinian resistance and hatred. But the violence and hatred towards Jewish Israelis by Palestinians, is also a very understandable human response to the gratuitous pain and suffering that the IDF occupation army causes its Palestinian subjects every day. Our best glimpse of that Israeli behavior is due to a luckily-placed camera. The Palestinians need as many of these luckily-placed cameras as they can afford. These videos might force more people to imagine what goes on even when cameras aren’t around.

Lately, Netanyahu took his grade B acting skills and went to the video camera to compete with the Palestinian video intifada. What exactly was his message? Did he apologize for his army’s behavior shown in those other videos? Did he promise to punish the IDF perpetrators of illegal acts against Palestinians? No. It was more of the same incitement, but worse. More dehumanizing. More of the toxic rhetoric that causes the IDF to behave so badly in the first place. Palestinians are not like the English speaking viewers Netanyahu was addressing, he said. “They” just want their children killed. Netanyahu’s answer to the IDF doing the indefensible, is justifying the indefensible.

It’s not just the prime minister who is inciting Israelis. It’s hard to find an Israeli politician let alone an army rabbi who hasn’t said something morally indefensible about “the Palestinians.”

That type of dehumanization and incitement must result in Jewish occupation soldiers doing whatever the hell they want to the poor people under their boot. It must lead to inhumane behavior by the IDF. Some soldiers, given the opportunity, will take this hatred out on Palestinians after their favorite soccer team loses. With others it might take a fight with their girlfriend. But shudder when you imagine the righteous rage that even more level headed soldiers must feel, when innocent Israeli civilians, get killed by one of THEM, the anti semitic “blood thirsty” Palestinian. What is to hold back Israeli soldiers from taking a little Zionist revenge against the “them”?

Isn’t that what he is told from all sides is what “Jewish values” are? That’s why Israel started the last Gaza war: revenge for the kidnapping and killing of a few of ours by them.

These are the issues Israeli society is dealing with while the rest of the world is in a deep slumber: Netanyahu’s dangerous manipulation of his people’s fears of the other. As I have repeatedly pointed out the incitement that Netanyahu is relentlessly accusing Abbas of, which Netanyahu’s own security people have told him ad nauseam that Abbas is innocent of, is in fact exactly what Netanyahu himself is guilty of.

The best chance to stop that incitement is for its results to be recorded. These videos and the embarrassment they cause to Israel and the IDF might actually stop Netanyahu’s tribalization of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

About Yakov Hirsch

Yakov Hirsch is a professional poker player and a writer. His twitter handle is @Yakovhirsch and his articles are posted at yakovhirsch.com.

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17 Responses

Mr. Hirsch, this reads like J’Accuse, 2016. As despairingly gruesome this litany is, you have done a great job. Have posted it my blog.

The ICA (Israeli Cowardly Army) is the modern day SS. At least, for now, they are confined to wreak havoc on the sovereign state of Palestine, recognized as such by 136 counties, and Palestinian citizens.

All this as Google waited out the recent noise about Palestine’s absence from its maps, with no intention of correcting that deliberate omission. Google maps were, once upon a time, to be trusted for their accuracy. Clearly, this no longer applies. Where else have they applied artistic license à la Google?

“At least, for now, they are confined to wreak havoc on the sovereign state of Palestine, recognized as such by 136 counties, and Palestinian citizens. ”

Yes, because the ‘ICA’/IOF could never face an actual army without suffering huge losses. They aren’t really an army in the sense that armies go into battle expecting death; what soldier doesn’t know that he or she may die or be wounded in battle, not hoping for it, but knowing full well that’s the likelihood. Israeli soldiers are fearful idiots and would cower in fear meeting a real ‘army’. The loss of one IOF ‘soldier’ is more than they can bear. They’re more the shooting fish in a barrel type of army, slaughtering civilians with every kind of weapon the u.s. will give them. Then call them ‘battle-tested’. There’s nothing they won’t lie about; it was civilian-tested. There has never been any ‘battles’ per se, except for the bank accounts of american taxpayers for the last 3 generations, with no end in sight. This is the battle they’re best at, they lose nothing, Americans and all the other ‘others’ will fight (and lose, with incalculable losses) their endless wars, all the while continuing to provide this rogue of rogue ‘nation’ with weapons to test on the captive civilian population of Gaza.

I read a month or two ago that Israel has mounted a major program to get those Palestinian videos off of the internet, especially off of YouTube. Maybe the IDF soldiers should start wearing body cameras like the cops in many US municipalities, but who in the Israeli government could do anything with the videos that might actually help the Palestinians?

Shooting and bombing civilians with methods tried and executed by the Nazis, now practiced by the ICA/IOF makes the genocidal zio army the most despised “force” of the present. Nevertheless, not until I saw footage of the “army’s” chaotic retreat from Lebanon, did I realise the depth of incompetence from the “officer” caste on down. The sight of stragglers strewn all over the area was one shock. Looking at army trucks speeding by without stopping to pick up the losers on foot… there’s no word that adequately describes my horror. And this is a wannabe state that advertises itself as the safe home for all Jews (!) If israel were ever invaded… But I suppose that’s why the US was permitted to establish the massive military base in israel — to sacrifice american suckers’ lives in defence of the israeli civilians.

“Nevertheless, not until I saw footage of the “army’s” chaotic retreat from Lebanon, did I realise the depth of incompetence from the “officer” caste on down. The sight of stragglers strewn all over the area was one shock. Looking at army trucks speeding by without stopping to pick up the losers on foot… there’s no word that adequately describes my horror.”

Xanadou – are you referring to Lebanon 2006 when Gilad Shalit was captured? If so, I have to wonder, after reading your post, was he captured outright or left behind by the cowardly IOF running out of Dodge with their tails set firmly between their legs.

They leave their own behind, then shriek to the world about ‘our brave soldiers’ captured by the animals, the beasts, the savage other. Seriously, pick up your trash as you run for the border, cowards.

Netanyahoo is ever vigilent in his hateful diatribe against the Palestinians, he always has to have a lynch mob ready to carry out his unspoken and spoken commands and his justification of mob rule:

“Palestinians are not like the English speaking viewers Netanyahu was addressing, he said. “They” just want their children killed. Netanyahu’s answer to the IDF doing the indefensible, is justifying the indefensible. ”

And in the twilight of the Obama presidency, Mr. Obama chose to remain a zionist.

Mr. Obama’s selection for the presidency was made possible when Joe Lieberman took over the former’s campaign. Obama’s first act of loyalty was to dump the outspoken Rev.Wright. It also explains why obama has and will continue to endure netanyahoo’s contemptible behaviour, including his self invitation to the despicable spectacle for the supine congress complete with the claque (set of three) who initiated the “ovations”. (Look for them on the left side of the screen, sitting in an almost empty row.)

I expect that lieberman is likely behind the silly pr that made obama into the intellectual extraordinaire. Comments about the real obama made by his coworkers at Harvard’s Law Review, if anyone can find them anywhere anymore, are dismaying. The same goes for mrs o. One can no longer find the article published in 2008, by the Chicago Tribune, about her role as corporate bouncer whose legal qualifications included removing hospital patient’s whose insurance coverage had maxed out, and dumping them on the streets of Chicago’s equivalent of Skid Row.

More of the same scandalous obeisance is forthcoming, courtesy of (s)elections 2016…

I have felt for a long time that Netanyahu’s greatest crime is to teach Israel’s Jewish and Palestinian population to hate and hate and hate; he has stolen their conscience and soul. Nazi Germany’s greatest crime was to teach German’s to hate and hate and hate Jews and minorities. When a country looses its soul and conscience it looses its sanity and once that is gone social, political and finally national destruction will always follow and good examples are the Roman Empire and Nazi Germany. Its not too late but Israel’s doomsday clock is rapidly approach midnight.

|| shaun patrick: … When a country looses its soul and conscience … ||

One might argue that Israel…
– envisioned as a religion-supremacist “Jewish State” encompassing as much as possible of Palestine;
– established by means of terrorism and the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian population;
– maintained and expanded by means of military-enforced oppression, torture, murder, occupation and colonization; and
– perpetually belligerent, intransigent and (war) criminal,
…has never had a soul or conscience.

|| … it looses its sanity and once that is gone social, political and finally national destruction will always follow and good examples are the Roman Empire and Nazi Germany. Its not too late but Israel’s doomsday clock is rapidly approach midnight. ||

Zio-supremacists are pretty confident that midnight for their Thousand Year “Jewish State” is still ~930 years away.

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